Column: Snyder delivers the goods for 'Skins

Michael WilbonThe Washington Post

Published Friday, January 09, 2004

The notion of crediting Daniel Snyder still doesn't sit well with a lot of folk. They wonder if he is going to sabotage the savior, Joe Gibbs, even though it was Snyder who brought Gibbs back, lifted him out from under the Falcons' noses despite the fact that Gibbs owned a small piece of the team. You listen to the radio callers and their euphoria over Gibbs' return is frequently tempered by the notion that Snyder is going to interfere with Gibbs' plan for making the Redskins a contender once again, by the presumption that in a short time Snyder will be sending plays from the owner's box or telling Gibbs whether he should go with a one-back formation or two. It's like Snyder is the bogeyman and he isn't going to stop until he destroys the very thing he loves.

This is nonsense. As it pertains to the product on the field of play, Snyder is guilty of trying everything but figuring out nothing ... to this point. Time after time, particularly after the most spectacular setbacks, Snyder has said, "I'm going to keep at this until I get it right. I've made a lot of mistakes, but I just want to win so badly."

He might have gotten it right this time. Let's ask ourselves this: If we found out today that Snyder had the chance to get Joe Gibbs, at any price, and didn't, what would we have said about him then? Snyder isn't going to drive Gibbs crazy because he idolizes Gibbs. Snyder is 38, which means he was 16 when the Redskins won their first Super Bowl. Rarely does a man have greater heroes than the champions of his youth. I bet there aren't five men in his life Snyder has looked up to more than Gibbs. Even the way Gibbs called Snyder "Daniel" as opposed to the ridiculous "Mr. Snyder" had a fondness to it that softened them both. Certainly, this can be the defining relationship of Snyder's ownership, unlike anything he has had with the three previous coaches, as much tutor as employee.

Norv Turner was a coach he didn't hire. Marty Schottenheimer is a coach he didn't get to know nearly well enough before hiring. Steve Spurrier is a coach he never should have hired. Gibbs is an icon. His icon. Look, Snyder deserves plenty of criticism for the dysfunctional state the Redskins have been in the last four years, but he's not crazy. Already, he has half the equation right; the team is the most profitable of the 32 clubs. The bet here is he isn't going to alienate Gibbs, isn't going to tell him who to draft or who to hire.

I had essentially one question to ask Snyder Thursday afternoon, as Gibbs finished up a round of interviews on the day of his official triumphant homecoming. And the question was this: How do you answer the criticism that you won't be able to help yourself, that in the end you'll do something to sabotage or undercut Gibbs and this new authority you've vested in him?

And Snyder said, "All I plan to do, all I want to do, is get him what he wants. That's my job. If he wants this coach, I want to get him the coach. If he wants these players, I'll get him those players. If Steve Spurrier wanted it, I got it. That's my job. I feel like with Joe's leadership skills and understanding of the tradition of the Redskins, there's no other person in the world I'd rather have lead the direction of the franchise. That's why he's the team president. He sets our complete direction."

Snyder has been getting pounded, of course, nationally and locally, and not just by the media, which is easy to dismiss, but by former NFL players and coaches, some of whom body-slammed him on national TV as the Redskins lost nine of their final 11 games and Spurrier looked in over his head, which he was.

Asked how he was feeling now, having gotten the coach he wanted since the first day he bought the team, Snyder said, "I'm numb. I'm feeling satisfied. I feel like we're just fine. I'm happy for the fans. This is going to be wonderful, and fun, and Joe's going to be around for a long time."

Snyder started another sentence, which began, "I've made some mistakes ..." Then he stopped to begin a story. His mother, still recently widowed, called him Thursday morning after dreaming about Gerry Snyder, Dan's father. "As my mother told me today, 'This is such a blessing and sometimes in life things are meant to be.' She thought maybe it wasn't meant to be, with Steve. She asked me, 'Do you believe in that?' And I told her, 'I do now.'"

He believes now because something so far reaching and with such major implications appears to have worked out wonderfully, and he hasn't been able to say that about his football club's on-field performance since 1999 when the Redskins made the playoffs. "I've made some mistakes," he said, starting again without finishing the thought.

The courting and hiring of Gibbs is anything but a mistake.

At the end of another terribly disappointing, playoff-less season, it's nothing but a triumph for Snyder, and there have been precious few of those in his tenure.